Yes, Chris Paul didn’t play on Tuesday in Los Angeles, where the Clippers entered the night as the second-best team in the NBA, against the league's best team, the Oklahoma City Thunder. And, yes, there was no Chauncey Billups, either.

Even without what is expected to eventually be the Clippers’ starting backcourt, LA put up a game fight in a marquee matchup between two of the three teams (the San Antonio Spurs are the other) who have shown they could land in the Western Conference finals this spring.

Though the game was hard to judge based on who wasn’t there, the play of two guys who were there (that would be Oklahoma City’s Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook) was sterling enough to qualify as a loud-and-clear statement from the Thunder, which went something like this: We are the defending West champs, and we intend to keep it that way.

The result was a 109-97 Thunder win, though the game was closer throughout. Durant took over in the final quarter, scoring 13 of his 32 points in the fourth, including back-to-back 3-pointers that stretched a single-digit lead to a 14-point margin.

The overall performance of Durant, who had seven rebounds and seven assists to round out his MVP-caliber night, had to leave the Clippers with the lingering sense that, if there is anyone in the league who can handle him, that player is not on their roster.

Westbrook, meanwhile, added 26 points, another sign the Clippers—and the West in general—will have a pair of difficult problems to handle when the playoffs come around. The Clippers have lost twice to the Thunder this season; in those games, Durant and Westbrook have combined to score a whopping 116 points.

The more immediate problem for the Clippers, who have now lost two straight, is the health of Paul, who is coping with an injury to his right kneecap which he appeared to aggravate in Monday’s loss to the Golden State Warriors.

“There’s no timetable right now,” Del Negro said. “He had an MRI last week when he did it. He won’t get another MRI. He’ll probably get some X-rays and things just to double-check everything. He’s just sore. It’s a pain tolerance thing. It’s a bruise on your kneecap and you have to be able to run and move and cut and jump and do things and it’s going to be sore for a while.”

The Clippers need Paul back, especially with 10 of their next 11 games coming on the road. After what Durant and Westbrook did to them on Tuesday, it is obvious they will have a hard enough time keeping up with the West elite in the playoffs, but losing ground in terms of seeding while they wait to be back in good health is not going to help their cause, either.